2. Eldrin

Chapter two

Eldrin

E arlier that day

“Why is he sending you?” Siliana asked me, her voice weighed with concern. She stood in the doorway of my bedroom, surrounded by the curved white wood frame, her hands fidgeting with each other, her skeleton hand intertwined with her hand of flesh. Siliana was three decades my senior, and my oldest friend, but we appeared to be the same age. This was typical of all of my people, who were young until it was close to the time that death decided to take us. And it would—death spared no one, especially those who were born from it, those whose lives were tied with the Darkening Woods.

“He needs to send someone,” I said, sorting through the varnished chest filled with human clothing that other elves had acquired during earlier adventures beyond our land’s boundary. I had the chest sent to my rooms to prepare for this journey, much of its contents spilled across the onyx floors. I needed speed and stealth in order to accomplish my task, and I’d have neither if the humans saw what I was. What I truly was. “And I’ve done it before,” I reminded her. “This isn’t my first journey beyond the barrier.”

“It’s not safe.” Siliana’s brow furrowed. “I don’t like it.”

“We’ll like it even less if the barrier breaks.” I pulled out a black shirt with buttons down the front. It would be tight, but it should fit. “You saw what happened to the Gold Fae,” I said. “They’re struggling to keep the humans out of their home. Though the humans would leave them alone, if they knew what was good for them,” I finished in a whisper.

“We’re elves. We know better than to act before watching.”

“I don’t think the fae had much of a choice.” Not everyone’s lands arrived with a protective barrier like ours did, but we had protection even in our own world, and it seemed like it had deigned to come with us. We had old enemies that we needed to protect ourselves from, and it seemed we had a similar need here.

“This is ridiculous,” Siliana muttered. “It’s as if humans cannot understand that we don’t want to be here as little as they want us here.” My friend had a point. While others tried to make sense of their new circumstances, we elves stayed back. And watched. Some of the other peoples from our home adapted to their new surroundings. Some beings had such a small piece of our home transported that they had no choice but to leave and engage with the humans. But us? We treasured our barrier immediately. We decided to keep to ourselves and hope that, someday, the worlds would right themselves, even if history was not on our side. We had no guarantee that the worlds would ever go back. Unfortunately, in the meantime, our barrier was weakening, and each time someone— anyone— passed through it, it weakened further. Soon, it would break. The magics here were…different. Unsuited for our nature. Which made sense, as this wasn’t our home.

Siliana and I were in my bedroom in the palace, the wooden branches of the trees that grew within and around the royal residence waving their golden boughs outside my window. The same winds carried the familiar scents of dried leaves and sweet late season flowers. Here, I could pretend that we were home. I could pretend that our lands stretched so far that it would take weeks to cross. But we would never be home. Not in my lifetime.

Siliana watched me burrow through the chest for pants, the ridiculous stiff things that were the fashion for humans. They had marvels of fabrics, and they chose the roughest garments possible to make them. Near the bottom of the chest, I found a pair of leather gloves and tried them on—they would cover my skeleton hand enough, as long as no one touched it.

“Do you think Vanir is right?” she asked. “That a human can fix the barrier.”

I sighed. “I cannot know such things. But his logic is sound—and he has many to advise him. It makes sense that we need a willing creature of this realm to make an effective shield against it.”

Siliana nodded, her long black hair cascading over her shoulders. “So, they’re sending…you.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked, knowing my questions had many answers. Some of which she would never utter out loud.

“We’re supposed to be convincing a human man or woman to join us forever, and you’re not the most…friendly.”

I shook out a pair of black pants, ones of a bearable material. They would suffice. At least they would fit, even though they risked being too short. “I know where to go,” I said. “Trust me, there is no shortage of humans willing to come here for the chance to live amongst us. It shouldn’t be hard.”

My words were circumspect, but I knew better than to let them be otherwise. One could never know who was listening, even in the privacy of my bedroom.

Once, when my father was still king, I would have seen this journey to the human lands as a grand adventure, which was how I treated all my obligations—complete it quickly so that I could spend the rest of my time seeking pleasures. Now, I had no choice but to obey, not if I wanted to live. Vanir was my half-brother. Vanir was now the king. And I was his disgraced older brother, the loser in the battle for the throne. Well, was it really a battle if only one person fought? Regardless, he seized the throne, convinced much of the court to join him, and I would have been dead years ago if not for the worlds merging. Elves tended not to leave competition alive. But after the merge, it was decided that we needed every member of the kingdom possible since our numbers were so low, especially one as “useful” as me. And Vanir did not want to alienate more of his court than he had to, since I did still have some friends among the nobles. And thus, I was here, in my room, preparing to be his errand boy.

But this was not the day to dwell on my failures.

“Well, try to choose someone who has new stories, recipes, or something,” Siliana said, forcing a small smile. “It’s going to get boring eventually with just us. But when you get back, I want to talk to you about something.”

“What about?” I held the clothes, waiting for her to leave so that I could change. “Just tell me now.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you some so that you can think on it—I think you should consider residing in Gold Glen.”

“Gold Glen,” I echoed. “What do you think our original name for it was?”

“You know as well as I that there is no way for me to answer that.” Siliana was right—when we merged with this world, we took on its primary language, rendering our texts an indecipherable mess. If we didn’t have the books, those tomes that we could read one day but not the next, we may not have noticed the change in our language at all. “And you’re avoiding the topic,” Siliana prodded.

I was. The piece of our territory that had shifted from our home was quite large, large enough that Gold Glen was a good day’s ride from the palace and its attendant city with a fast horse—if not more.

“Why there? Why do you want me to live in that village?”

“I think it’s time you choose a path forward with your life—and you won’t be able to do it here with Vanir watching you.”

“It’s not like I can hide from him, especially now.”

“No, but it’s better than living under the same roof, so to speak.” She worried her mother’s garnet ring. “You need to have a life of your own. Find a partner. Have something that isn’t…this.”

A partner. Even if I was ready to bring someone with me into the hell that was dancing around Vanir’s whims, there was no one in the Darkening Woods that called to me in such a manner. Despite what the rumors said, spawned as they were from our lifetime of being close friends, Siliana was committed to another, who was left behind when our world split. All of us left behind people we treasured. Our capital, Great Glen, went with us to the new world, but many of the court were using the holiday from the formal court season to visit estates and family who lived far away. Even the working class used this time to travel, while the demand for their services was less. Thus, Great Glen, which was normally bursting with nobility and their attendants, had been relatively empty when the world split. I still didn’t know whether that was a good thing or not.

“I’ll think on it,” I said. And I would, because Siliana was right. Partner aside, moving far from court would give me an opportunity to live without seeing my brother, which would increase the odds that he’d eventually ignore me. In a place like Gold Glen, I wouldn’t be in a position to cause Vanir any trouble—it was not a good place to plan a coup. The village had more cows than elves. But whether I wanted to go to Gold Glen, and whether Vanir would let me, were two very different questions.